BEVERLY HILLS, CA–The president of The CW has no idea why The L.A. Complex is not drawing more viewers.
Mark Pedowitz says he loves the Toronto-produced serial and plans to air all 13 season two episodes, even though last Tuesdays hit a new low of 390,000 overnight, estimated viewers in the United States. The same episode drew an overnight, estimated 78,000 viewers on MuchMusic in Canada.
On the positive side, Pedowitz says the the series “does well digitally” in terms of streamed viewership and generates a ton of social media buzz. He praised the “great showrunners,” singling out executive producer Martin Gero as “just fantastic” and hopes to be in business with him “for a long, long time.”
He says the show’s future beyond this season will be assessed at the end of its summer run. “We wouldn’t have stuck with it if we didn’t believe in it,” he told critics during Monday morning’s executive session.
The CW is shooting all of their new shows for fall in Canada, with Arrow and Emily Owens, M.D. based in Vancouver and Beauty and the Beast based in Toronto.
6 Comments
Again with this show? Seriously, what do the show runners have on you that you keep shilling this flop?
The fact is that this godawful pile of dung has been a colossal failure. The only reason there is a second season is CTV stupidly greenlit it before they looked at any actual numbers. They will undoubtedly lose a boatload of money of it and the only real question is what idiot suit took the fall for this mess?
This attempted face-saving move by CW shows why its a nothing network barely in the Top 100 US channels. At least NBC can be comforted knowing that it has a very long way to fall before it becomes the #6 network.
Not the worst of shows out there. Not the best either.
I keep thinking that maybe for what it costs the small audience on Much makes the show viable. But every time i think of that i see the numbers for Pretty Little Liars and they are twice as high.
As for on The CW, one should remember the show is on twice per week and while some might watch both times it does give people some flexibility.
As for the renewal, i am thinking it had something to do with the cash-flow from selling it to The CW. They started on season 2 before season 1 was on in the US. If it were a huge hit then brilliant! If not they probably would make at least a couple of dollars on it.
As for what the show-runner has on Bill, well i don’t know if there even is anything. Bill writes about Canadian tv and The LA Complex is just that. That the president of the network it is seen on in the US promising to show the whole season despite poor ratings is actually what some would call news.
Fans of Firefly are probably wishing this guy had been the one in charge over at FOX back in the day.
LOL Matt. Please remove that stick out of your butt.
This show is the best show I have seen in a while. It’s unfortunate that the ratings couldn’t be better but the praises it gets from critics and fans say a lot.
I think the problem with this show and why people are not watching it is because people see it as a copy of Melrose Place or every other crappy teen show on The CW.
Most people who actually give it a chance loves it.
Matt, you’re a moron. It’s been praised by almost every critic who has watched it. It’s literally the best show the CW has. It failed because people were too lazy to look past its familiar set-up.
Sorry folks, the facts are on my side. If the show was really any good at all, you would have seen an improvement from the laughably low levels based on word of mouth. Instead, its going the opposite way, hitting historic lows even for CW.
Really JC, the FANS like the show? That’s a shock! Normally fans hate the shows they watch.
And the critics? Please! Just because you get paid by some dying daily does not mean you know what makes a good TV show. Critics are often completely off the mark.
matt, i have to join the LOL @ you.
Come to an indie / freelance critic and rant about how critics getting paid by some dying daily meaning they know not what makes a good tv show. Perhaps you should look into the biography of the critic before you say he is not willing to write what he really thinks.
Just because a show fails in the US doesn’t mean it is a bad show. Perhaps you should check out Michael Tuesdays And Thursdays or maybe Call Me Fitz or perhaps Continuum or Republic Of Doyle. None of them are on major channels in the US and most aren’t even on any channel in the US. Or perhaps Living In Your Car is more your thing.
matt, you might want to check the facts before you claim they are on your side. Only 1 episode of The LA Complex was on CTV. It was Bell Media, the owner of CTV, who commissioned season 2 for their cable channel MuchMusic (which isn’t much about music any more).